The Forgotten Greek Books of Elizabethan England

Abstract

This essay was runner-up in the 2006 Literature Compass Graduate Essay Prize, Renaissance Section.

The well-founded view that the Elizabethans were not distinguished for Greek scholarship has spawned the mistaken presumption that no Greek books were printed in England between 1543 and 1610. In fact a variety of texts, mostly classical, were produced in London, Oxford and Cambridge during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign. Their survival raises the question of why domestic printers should have ventured into a market dominated by Continental printing-houses, and suggests a need to reassess the place of Greek in the intellectual and cultural life of the late sixteenth century.